Froome Leads Next Generation of Tour de France Contenders

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/sports/cycling/tour-de-france-chris-froome-alberto-contador.html

Version 0 of 1.

Only two years separate them in age, but they seem a generation apart. For much of the past decade, Alberto Contador has been the stage-race cyclist to beat, winning five grand tours, the grueling three-week races, including two in Paris. Chris Froome has been something of a development project, rising from obscurity in his African homeland to super domestique in Europe, twice finishing second in grand tours but never winning.

This year the roles have flipped. After a hugely successful spring season, Froome is now the leader of Sky, the most formidable team in cycling. And when the 100th Tour de France begins Saturday on the narrow, wind-driven roads of Corsica, he will be the man to beat, with Contador expected to lead a pack of 196 other riders in the chase.

“I think the obvious choice is Chris Froome,” said Tejay van Garderen, an American on BMC Racing who is a podium contender. “As of now, nobody has been able to climb with him. He’s going to be a hard guy to beat.”

Froome, 28, has more than just a stretch of four stage-race victories this spring to bolster his front-runner status. A Briton born in Kenya, he proved his mettle in last year’s Tour, finishing second to his teammate Bradley Wiggins. And this year’s 21-stage, 2,115-mile course plays to his strengths as a nimble climber and accomplished time trialist, with four mountaintop finishes and two time trials that are shorter but more hilly than last year’s.

Moreover, Team Sky is as deep as ever. Indeed, the loss of both Wiggins, who withdrew citing illness and knee problems, and the sprinter Mark Cavendish, who left Sky for Omega Pharma-Quick Step citing a lack of support, may have given an already methodical team even more focus.

There is no drama about whether to support Cavendish or questions about whether Wiggins or Froome will lead. The intrigue is gone, the goal singular: bring Chris Froome home in the maillot jaune, the victor’s yellow jersey.

“With Froome on this Death Star of a team, it could be like last year where it was almost a coronation,” said Joe Lindsey, a contributing writer for Bicycling Magazine, referring to the 2012 Tour, when Sky’s control of the race made Wiggins’s victory seem almost anticlimactic.

Yet Contador, 30, who missed last year’s Tour while serving a doping ban, is not ready to cede an inch. Savvy, tenacious and backed by a Saxo-Tinkoff team considered nearly as strong as Sky, Contador is, on his good days, as strong as Froome in the mountains and time trials.

“They are both suited to the course,” said Jonathan Vaughters, general manager of Garmin-Sharp.

Unfortunately for Contador, he has had fewer good days than usual this year, winning only two stages and no races while sustaining a drubbing from Froome in the time trial at the Critérium du Dauphiné earlier this month. He blamed his showing on allergies, but others wondered about his legs, noting that the last time Contador failed to win a spring race was in 2007.

Notably missing from the field will be Vincenzo Nibali of Astana, the third-place finisher last year, who handed Froome his lone defeat this year, at Tirreno-Adriatico, and then won the Giro d’Italia. He chose to skip the Tour de France in favor of another grand tour, the Vuelta a España in August. The perennial stars Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara will also miss the race. And Andy Schleck, a past winner and two-time runner-up, has struggled with injuries and is given little chance this year.

But other top riders are looking to upend the Contador-Froome narrative, including Cadel Evans of BMC Racing, the Australian who won in 2011; his teammate van Garderen, who finished fifth last year and won the competition for best young rider; Joaquim Rodriguez of Katusha, one of the world’s best climbers; and Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Lotto-Belisol, who finished fourth last year.

Vaughters asserts that any one of three riders on his Garmin-Sharp team could reach the podium: the team leader Ryder Hesjedal, the 2012 Giro champion; Dan Martin, a powerful climber; or Andrew Talansky, a 24-year-old American in his first Tour.

“I see our team as the potential wrench in the race,” Vaughters said. “Our guys are just below the radar enough that they could sneak away.”